


bye-bye, and we'll never, ever

by guttersvoice



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, several implied ships one-sided or otherwise but i dont wanna clog ship tags with my genfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 12:50:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15073523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guttersvoice/pseuds/guttersvoice
Summary: one of those nights; not the worst kind, but the difficult kind





	bye-bye, and we'll never, ever

**Author's Note:**

> please note that post-canon tag !!!! this contains endgame spoilers for v3 !! 
> 
> anyway the other day i woke up, apparently wrote this, and passed out for another few hours. and then like the next day i remembered that i wrote it  
> now ive cleaned it up and im posting it because im trying to do my best to just ! post more of the things i write! its hard, im a baby, but im doing my best.
> 
> [edit 15/7/18] on reflection, im worried this might come across as character hate? its not at all. kind of the opposite, actually.. i really do think that if things had been different, they all could have been very close friends.

It's one of those nights where even the thin, lumpy motel mattress is too soft for Maki to feel safe sleeping on. 

She'd thought maybe tonight it would be fine, but here she is, sat on the ratty, stained carpet, listening to the other two breathe, trying to untangle herself from the memories she’s still so sure are hers, just for long enough to lie down and pass out for at least a few hours. Even if it’s on the floor.

She knows Shuichi is awake from the change in his breathing, the soft movements of a body under blankets; knows it before even he does, probably, but makes no move to acknowledge it. Checking on him before he's ready won't help.

He pads past her, quiet as he can, floorboards shifting and creaking under his feet. From the bathroom the sound of water fills a glass three times.

When he comes back through, he doesn't lie back down where he was. He doesn't ask Maki what she's doing up, doesn't ask what's wrong; he doesn’t need to. Just sits down next to her. His hands aren't shaking, but his fingertips turn white where they press into the glass. The streetlights filtering through the curtains from outside cast his profile in soft shades of orange.

“Dreams?” she prompts. The word comes out of her throat too-dry. For a moment, she thinks she was too quiet, that he didn't hear her question, but after a few seconds of silently contemplating his water, he shakes his head, then rests it on her shoulder. His hair is still damp from the glass he upended over his head while he was in the bathroom. She doesn’t mind feeling it slowly soak through the fabric of her t-shirt as much as she might have once.

“Don't think so,” he murmurs. “I just - miss--"

He doesn't say a name. The wounds are still too fresh; they don't say their names unless prompted by one another, usually, not wanting to remind each other so sharply. Hard enough that they keep reopening by themselves, there’s no need to rip each other’s stitches out.

But tonight isn't such a bad night on that front, for Maki. Tonight she's kept awake by the trauma that might be false, implanted into her, a childhood that haunts her and might have never happened, rather than the very real trauma the three of them share. She puts her arm around Shuichi, fingers carding as gently as she can through the hair at the back of his neck.

It's getting long. He should probably get it cut soon, she thinks, though it's not like she can talk on that front. The length of hers alone is such a recognisable factor, but she can't bring herself to cut it. At least she keeps it in a single braid, now, tucks it away into jackets and hoods to stay a little more inconspicuous. The other two never complain, but they're the same, after all: Shuichi refuses to wear a hat; Himiko won't get rid of hers. It's fine. Who even cares, anyway.

“Who?” Maki asks. If he doesn’t want to talk more about it, he doesn’t have to.

Another long pause.

Then,

“Ouma,” he confesses, and she can't help the noise she makes in response, startled disbelief mingled with something almost like amusement. He tips his head, smiles wryly up at her. He looks so tired. “I know, right? But I - even if I didn't like him as a person, he still--”

She doesn't say anything. It's hard to be sure how rational the hot anger bubbling up inside her at the boy's name alone is: how real that feeling is, if it's justified at all.

Shuichi tugs her hand away from where she's biting her nails ragged.

“But even if he lied about why, he still - did all those things.”

All those things. Yes; he had hurt them. Killed people. Danced them to their deaths like puppets on strings, yes. 

Hard to trust her memories sometimes. Even shared ones - but, she reminds herself firmly, the source of the feelings being false doesn't negate the feelings themselves, or their importance. Even if someone wanted her to feel a certain way, that doesn't mean her feeling that way is less real.

It's something she's told herself a thousand times, or more.

“I just keep thinking,” Shuichi continues, and somehow justifying her own emotional reaction as acceptable has made it so much easier to handle already. Maybe it's just because he's long gone, and can't hurt anyone any more than he already has. Maybe it's because she can still remember the things she read in his dorm room.

“I just keep thinking, about how he said he liked me,” Shuichi continues. His eyebrows are pinched together in the middle. “I don't know if that was a lie. I think he might have meant it.”

She wants to laugh; to scoff and disregard the possibility that Ouma was even capable of that sort of thing, but something soft and quiet and unnamable in her chest stops her.

“You're probably right,” she says, instead.

He nods against her shoulder. Sips at his water.

“I wonder a lot, if I'd taken him seriously, then, if I could have helped him. I mean --" he pauses in that way that means he's chewing at the inside of his cheeks. “‘Scuse the comparison, but if one of the people who kept all their secrets and feelings locked away and hidden could be dragged out of her room and coaxed into opening up with kindness and friendship--"

He's right, she doesn't like the comparison, even if he makes a good point.

“I don't think he'd have let anyone-" she tries.

“I thought the same of you,” he tells her, blunt and to the point. He’s right; she shuts her mouth. “But, yeah, I don't think it could have been me.  _ He _ could have. Maybe he did, even.”

Maybe he did. She doesn't want to think about it, but at the same time - she almost hopes so. She knows he could have. There wasn’t much time for it, and maybe she's romanticising him. Still.

“Or Amami,” Shuichi adds, thoughtful, tapping his finger on the rim of his glass. “Ouma liked him, I think, so if he'd… maybe he could have. Or A--"

He cuts off here, and this time it's not carefully sidestepping a thought but tripping over it, tangling himself up.

He doesn't cry. Neither of them cry so much anymore. Maki sometimes thinks they're both dried up. Numb from it.

Still, he shakes like he's crying, so she holds him anyway. Himiko crawls down the bed and puts her arms around the both of them, laid out on her stomach; she rests her chin on Maki’s head. She's been awake a while, Maki realises.

“Well I think he fucking sucked,” she announces, startling a choked laugh out of Shuichi. “Yeah, he could have changed, but it was up to him to work on being honest and he made no real effort beyond trying to push that responsibility on someone else who was dealing with a whole lot right then. He was a bitch and he sucked and there's nothing anyone can do to change that now.”

Himiko is always the most pragmatic and straightforwardly wise about these things. Even when she's hopeless and helpless and can’t stop crying, she still manages to do a better job at this than Maki or Shuichi. Perhaps because she started her self-improvement work during the game, like she's suggesting Ouma could have. Perhaps she was just always the best of them.

Probably the latter, Maki decides.

“Now come back to bed,” Himiko insists, and - she's trembling, actually, even as safely as she holds the other two in her small arms. “And cuddle me back to sleep, because I  _ did _ have a bad dream and I deserve looked after. And then tomorrow we can find somewhere isolated to do some screaming.”

Maki’s smile comes easy.


End file.
